In the wake of their parents’ separation, twin brothers Jared and Simon (Freddie Highmore, times two) move to the dilapidated family pile of Spiderwick Mansion with older sister Mallory (Sarah Bolger) and their mother Helen (Mary-Louise Parker).

Jared explores the house and discovers a book in the attic entitled Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide To The Fantastical World Around You, a hand-written study by their great-great-uncle (David Strathairn).

Jared opens the book and simultaneously opens a doorway to a world of fairies and sprites surrounding the old mansion.

The boy soon learns that a wicked, shape-shifting ogre called Mulgarath (Nick Nolte) seeks the Field Guide and will stop at nothing to acquire it. So the children join forces with a friendly hobgoblin called Hogsqueal (voiced by Seth Rogen) to ensure the book’s safekeeping.

The Spiderwick Chronicles is a rollicking fairy-tale full of magic and mystery, otherworldly creatures and daring, based on the books by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black.

Computer effects are woven seamlessly into the live action, including an exhilarating flight sequence on a griffin, gathering in pace for an thunderous finale.

The Game Plan (Cert U, 105 mins, Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment, Family/Comedy, also available to buy DVD £19.99/Blu-ray £23.99)

Joe Kingman (Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson) is the superstar quarterback of the Boston Rebels, single-handedly guiding his team towards the NFL championship play-offs.

His carefully ordered world implodes when eight-year-old Peyton Kelly (Madison Pettis) turns up on his doorstep, claiming to be his daughter. Abandoned by her mother for two weeks while she is on humanitarian duties in Africa, Peyton needs somewhere to stay and Joe takes in the rosy-cheeked tyke.

At first, Joe struggles to adapt to parenthood. When the media threatens to eat him alive for his thoughtless behaviour, Joe goes on the PR offensive by attending ballet lessons with his little girl, where he strikes up a friendship with fiery-tempered teacher Monique Vasquez (Roselyn Sanchez).

The Game Plan is an old-fashioned Disney yarn extolling the virtues of family unity.

Johnson demonstrates a flair for comedy, throwing himself into each misadventure with gusto, and there is a pleasing rapport with cute-as-a-button Pettis.

After her latest brush with the law, talented hip-hop dancer Andie (Briana Evigan) reluctantly agrees to enroll at the prestigious Maryland School of the Arts.

She struggles to fit in, rebelling against the formal teaching methods preferred by school director Blake Collins (Will Kemp). The one ray of sunshine is a burgeoning friendship with Blake’s rebellious, younger brother Chase (Robert Hoffman), who loves to freestyle at local clubs.

He daringly suggests that Maryland students should form their own crew. Together, this band of outsiders proves you don’t have to come from the streets to dance from the heart.

Step Up 2 The Streets doesn’t have any unique moves, drawing on Footloose, Flashdance, Dirty Dancing and their ilk to establish the various personal conflicts, then resolve them with a synchronised somersault.

Evigan and Hoffman are both easy on the eye but, curiously, their moves aren’t nearly as hot as the supporting cast.

Bickering brothers David (Andy Serkis) and Peter (Reece Shearsmith) attempt to get rich quick by kidnapping gangster’s daughter Tracey (Jennifer Ellison) then milking her old man, Arnie, for the ransom money.

Tracey’s misfit stepbrother, Andrew (Steven O’Donnell), who is part of the underhand scheme, is dispatched with the cash but fails to notice Arnie’s henchmen Muk Li San (Logan Wong) and Chun Yo (Jonathan Chan-Presley) following him to the rendezvous point.

Tracey turns the tables on her captors, knocking Andrew unconscious and dragging weakling Peter into the woods in the dead of night where they come face-to-face with a maniacal loner with a taste for human blood.

The Cottage bears none of the hallmarks of writer-director Paul Andrew Williams’s glittering debut, London To Brighton. Tension evaporates early on, pacing is sluggish and characters are screaming caricatures who grate on our nerves so badly, we’re cheering when the deranged farmer starts hacking them to pieces.

Doting mother Laura (Belen Rueda), who was raised in an orphanage, returns to the grand house of her youth with the intention of renovating the crumbling property as a home for disabled and disadvantaged children.

Her husband Carlos (Fernando Cayo) and seven-year-old son Simon (Roger Princep) support her in this altruistic endeavour. Laura grows increasingly concerned about Simon, who seems to be more interested in his imaginary friend than the real world.

One day, Simon vanishes without a trace, plunging Laura and Carlos into the midst of every parent’s worst nightmare.

Mexican filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth) strongly influences the look of Juan Antonio Bayona’s directorial debut in his role as producer of The Orphanage.

Bayona conjures an atmosphere of foreboding but there is little in his haunted house we haven’t seen before apart from one genuinely chilling sequence – Laura’s game of statues with the ghost children – that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end.

Estranged from her sister Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh) for some time, Margot (Nicole Kidman) attempts to rebuild bridges by attending her sibling’s wedding to slacker Malcolm (Jack Black), accompanied by her demure teenage son Claude (Zane Pais).

The atmosphere between the two women is frosty to say the least, and Margot is not shy about airing her true feelings regarding the lackadaisical groom-to-be (“He’s not ugly. He’s completely unattractive!”).

Malcolm and Claude act as peacekeepers but with years of sibling rivalry and simmering resentment about to reach boiling point, the fate of the big day hangs in the balance.

Todd Haynes’s impressionistic biopic of music icon and rabble rouser Bob Dylan casts six actors to play different aspects of the singer and his work. It’s a ponderous meditation on one man’s roller-coaster life that will delight and infuriate in equal measure.

The early days, when Dylan fell in love with folk music and became fascinated with Woody Guthrie, feature young Marcus Carl Franklin (who sings live) while Heath Ledger assumes the mantle for Dylan as the inconstant lover.

Ben Whishaw looks spookily accurate during the period when Dylan became obsessed with Rimbaud and Richard Gere plays a recluse with a dark secret. Christian Bale essays protest era Dylan but it’s Cate Blanchett who shines brightest, looking physically wrecked as the singer on his 1966 tour of England, as he swats away the media and dodges barbs from old flame Coco Rivington (Michelle Williams).

Sixteen-year-old Mandy Lane (Amber Heard) is the girl that every guy wants to bed. The only boy Mandy trusts is her weedy best friend Emmet (Michael Welch), an outsider in the microcosm of school life where conformity and popularity are paramount.

Once the youngsters arrive at the house, booze and drugs flow freely, not that Mandy partakes, preferring to remain sober alongside handsome ranch hand Garth (Anson Mount), the only responsible adult on the estate.

What begins as a weekend of high spirits turns into a nightmare when one of the guests is brutally slain by someone who has Mandy in their sights. The survivors grab a rifle but even in the light of day, no one is safe, least of all Mandy…

Ageing lothario Florentino Ariza (Javier Bardem) has always reserved a special place in his heart for one true love Fermina (Giovanna Mezzogiorno).

“Thoughts of you fill me with life,” he gushes, “I will love you forever.” Alas, fate and her father conspire to keep the soul-mates apart.

Through a series of flashbacks, we watch as the teenage Florentino (Unax Ugalde) woos Fermina secretly with love letters, only to be separated from his sweetheart when her controlling father (John Leguizamo) discovers the assignations and sends his daughter far away.

Eventually worn down by her father’s unfair assertions that she is too good for lowly Florentino, Fermina marries a kind doctor called Juvenal Urbino (Benjamin Bratt), but she cannot entirely erase the memory of her most ardent admirer, who laments in his diary: “My heart has more rooms than a whorehouse.”